With just over a month left in the fall semester, many studentshere at Ball State University will choose to put off thoughts ofhaving to start the whole ride over again come January. However,those who are willing to take a little time out of their day toplan ahead for the spring semester will find themselveswell-rewarded. With just a touch of foresight and a hint ofinquisition, you can save a bundle on your textbooks nextsemester.
It's safe to say that everyone has registered for springclasses, so the quest for savings begins now. First, see if aninstructor has been assigned to each of your respective classes. Ifso, you should have no trouble obtaining his e-mail address oroffice phone number through the search engine on the university'smain Web page. If your class has not been assigned a professor yet,pay a trip to that course's academic department. There you shouldalso be able to find out what textbook will be used in the spring.Ask for specifics about the required text, information like thebook title, publication year and edition number. Also, theInternational Standard Book Number (ISBN) is important, which canbe found over the barcode on back of any text. This number isuseful when trying to distinguish between different editions of abook with the same title.
Once you have all the necessary information, hit the Web. Thisisn't a plug, but half.com can be one of the most cost-effectivemeans of shopping for college textbooks. Here you will be facedwith many individual sellers, most of whom are other collegestudents from around the nation who are trying to sell their oldtextbooks. However, this form of transaction has potentialdrawbacks, because you are putting your trust in the seller to shipthe textbook to you. But there are still plenty of more-reliableused textbook businesses that you can find through a search enginetha might be a bit more reliable. Web sites likestudentshopper.com, ecampus.com and campusi.com are only three ofthe many options to use when shopping for textbook savings. Even ifprocrastination pushes your book shopping into the beginning ofJanuary, considerable savings can still be found in buyingtextbooks online with an overnight delivery charge.
As final exams for the fall semester begin to creep up on thestudent body, it is important that you know all your options whenyou sell you current textbooks back. The first, and most hasslefree option, is simply trading them in for cash at the bookstoresaround campus. However, this route will not always produce adequatecompensation. Many professors abandon their fall textbook andrequire a different one for spring students, resulting in a lowerbuyback offer. Even when this is not the case, the bookstore mayhave already accumulated a ceiling-high stack of 100-level coursetextbooks and have no interest in buying one more. If that happens,you can post your textbooks for sale on one of the manypeer-to-peer trading sites online. While this option will requiremore patience on your part as the seller, you will most likely beable to ask a higher price than you'd get at the bookstore.
I can personally testify that the minimal effort necessary tobuy your textbooks on the Internet is worth every penny. Prior tothe fall semester, I was able to save over $125 dollars on myrequired texts, which was an average of $25 per book. We studentsno longer have to walk into the campus bookstore with our headsbowed and a blank check in hand, forced to submit to theirridiculously inflated prices. There are a lot of options forpurchasing your spring semester textbooks. If you take the time tospend your money wisely, you'll be able to keep more of it in thelong run.
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